(Minghui.org) I was arrested once last year, but I maintained righteous thoughts, and was thus released. However, I have still been affected and controlled by occasional interference.
Compared with my fellow practitioners, I have not been as effective at clarifying the truth about the persecution to everyday people. My wife and two daughters do not even hold positive views about Dafa. Why is that? According to Master's teachings, we can find the cause only by searching within ourselves. Elevating our xinxing will lead to stronger righteous thoughts that eliminate the evil, thereby making us more effective at saving sentient beings.
1. Reliance on the Everyday Environment
I am easily influenced by both the everyday environment and my cultivation environment. I tend to rely on the improvement of my environment to positively impact the effectiveness of my Fa study, righteous thoughts, and truth clarification to those around me. I become happy and feel motivated whenever my surroundings take a turn for the better. A better environment makes it seem that the evil is more relaxed, or it creates the appearance that there is a new and more relaxed policy toward Falun Dafa. This will sometimes lead me to have faith in the government officials who have disagreed with the persecution.
Master has stated very clearly that we should not have any wishful thinking about the communist regime, because its nature will never change for the better. I seem to understand this, so I sometimes also talk about not having hope for the Party.
The fact is, I have still, subconsciously, maintained hope. For instance, in 2010, Practitioner A organized a study group at her daughter's apartment. I was a member of the group. One day, Practitioner A told us that her son-in-law's brother recently got promoted. The brother said that he hoped the study group would not affect his new position within the government. The brother also said that the government now had a new policy that had reached a consensus. It would no longer pay much attention to the older practitioners, and would mainly target the younger groups. Therefore he hoped that his mother-in-law did not invite younger practitioners.
Upon hearing this, not only did I not object, but I considered myself "an older practitioner," since I am in my sixties. I felt safer than the other practitioners, and I felt a little happy, too.
I later heard that the government's inner circle was setting limits on the management of Falun Dafa. I believed this, too, and shared this information with two other practitioners in my study group. The reality is that the government has never lessened the intensity of the persecution; they have only changed their methods. Even if the persecution has eased up a little at times, it has only been because “the evil doesn’t have enough strength for it to be made use of.”
An 80 year-old practitioner in our area was recently arrested. The lawyer she was appointed told her that since she was over 75, even if she were sentenced, she would just be placed on probation. She shared this at our study group, but I did not point out that this kind of persecution is still unacceptable. I even felt that being an elderly practitioner is almost like having immunity against the persecution.
Master has told us to completely negate any plans made by the old forces. Accepting any “policy” from the communist regime is accepting the old forces' arrangements and accepting the persecution.
Even if the environment seems relaxed, Master said in “20th Anniversary Fa Teaching,”
“...this is a reflection here in the human world of the cosmos’s Fa-rectification.”
The environment always results from Dafa practitioners' continuous resistance and steadfast voice against the persecution. Even when some government officials have shown some justice with regard to Falun Dafa, they did it only because they chose to be saved. But whether they can truly be saved will be determined by their final behavior.
The changes within society are determined by Dafa. Dafa practitioners are here to save the sentient beings. How can we forget our missions and the vows we made, and instead rely on everyday people and ordinary society?
2. Lack of Compassion
My dependence on the changes within my surroundings have also revealed my lack of compassion. If the environment around me improves, I feel that I can talk about Falun Gong proudly and confidently in public, especially to 610 Office officials, police officers, spies, and judges who used to persecute us.
After the Wang Lijun and Bo Xilai incident, I went to my neighborhood committee office and told them that in the future, everyone who has persecuted Falun Dafa will be punished. I later got myself into some trouble. I immediately realized that I had not spoken with compassion in the office. On the contrary, my aggression, resentment, and pursuit of revenge provoked the other side to seek their revenge. I did not clarify the truth to them solely to save them.
3. Saving Beings According to the Universe's Highest Standard
Master has often talked about how Dafa practitioners are great. This praise made me feel self satisfied. Especially a few years ago, I looked down and despised everyday people when I told them about Falun Dafa. This behavior irritated them. It doesn't matter how reasonable I sounded, as without showing respect, no one wanted to listen to me. I also did not realize how precious the Chinese people are, and that most of them have come from high levels. There are immeasurable beings behind them, and saving one of them means saving the countless number of beings behind them as well.
If my heart was not set right and in harmony with the characteristic of the universe, then I would not have the power of Dafa when I spoke. How could I then save sentient beings? Even my own family looked down on me when I did not cultivate well.
I truly found such attachments after reading Master's “20th Anniversary Fa Teaching,"
“Especially notable are the notions that one forms, or habits of thought that one forms, which make it very hard for a person to recognize when human thinking is unconsciously at work. And if one can’t recognize it, how is one to get rid of it? This is particularly challenging in the setting of China, where the evil Party has destroyed traditional Chinese culture and rigged up its own evil Party stuff instead—what we refer to as 'the culture of the Party.' It’s indeed going to be hard to recognize the Truth of the cosmos when one uses the habits of thought bred by that culture. And one won’t even be able to recognize that certain bad thinking and behavior are at odds with universal values.”
To me it means that through the years, many attachments can become habits. They surface in subconscious ways that are very hard to detect, and it is very hard to find them without carefully searching within.
In addition, several decades of living according to the mentality instilled by the Chinese Communist Party, mentalities that include lying, cruelty, class struggle, and violence, have left deep imprints on my mind. They are very hard to notice if I do not monitor myself using Dafa's principle of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance.
Category: Improving Oneself
